A Guide to Integrated Assurance

Association for Project Management (APM)

• Publisher: Association for Project Management (APM)
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781903494042
• eBook ISBN: 9781903494028
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Business

A Guide to Integrated Assurance enables organisations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their assurance activities. Written by APM's Assurance Specific Interest Group, the guide identifies important roles and responsibilities as well as tools and templates to help overcome 'silo-oriented approaches' to assurance that do not naturally result in integration.It is aimed at project managers, sponsors (in particular, those responsible for designing and carrying out assurance activities) and stakeholders with an interest in the successful delivery of the projects, programmes or portfolios.

1
Introduction

Assurance is an integral component of robust project governance as well as for governance of project management across an organisation. Through assurance, projects will undergo a range of reviews at different stages in their lifecycle. Integrated assurance is the co-ordination of these project reviews to ensure maximum impact and benefit at minimum cost and disruption. Only by having a systematic approach to assurance can an organisation hope to gain the full benefit of its assurance regime. Thus, a project assurance approach should be directly linked to an organisation’s overall assurance strategy.

This guide aims to assist organisations in developing and implementing this integrated approach. It does not attempt to give guidance on assurance generally, as it assumes the reader is familiar with the topic.

For brevity, the guide uses the terms project and project management as inclusive of programmes and the management of programmes of projects.

1.1 The case for integrated assurance

This section begins by describing assurance, and then discusses the dimensions and benefits of integrated assurance in the project/programme context.

Assurance is the process of providing confidence to stakeholders that projects, programmes and portfolios will achieve their scope, time, cost and quality objectives, and realise their benefits

(APM Body of Knowledge 6th edition)

From this statement, it can be seen that the purpose of assurance is to give stakeholders confidence that their project objectives will be achieved. Assurance activities need to examine the ways in which risks and issues are being identified and managed. They also need to look at the way in which opportunities are being evaluated and the actions being taken to realise any benefits. Effective assurance gives stakeholders confidence that resources are not being wasted or potential value lost as a result of shortcomings in the execution of the project while achieving its agreed objectives. Assurance activities can also help identify any shortcomings early enough for them to be rectified without an unfortunate impact on the project objectives.

There are a broad range of activities that may be carried out for various different stakeholders under this heading of assurance. Such activities all absorb time and money, and so could reduce the potential value of the project. In addition, the volume of assurance does not guarantee the avoidance of assurance gaps and can lead to confusion if mixed or contradictory opinions are given. Sometimes there is strength in welcoming different perspectives because of the different natures of assurance and the degree of objectivity exercised. The dialogue around reconciling those different views is what good governance is all about. If we seek one view on everything, we will compromise or dilute the assurance, thereby harming objectivity and devaluing the process.

The concept of integrated assurance is to streamline these disparate activities for greater efficiency and overall benefit for the project and its stakeholders. Integration of assurance can be considered across four dimensions.

1. Multiple stakeholders. Stakeholders are likely to have different assurance requirements to match their individual needs. This is especially true where stakeholders from a number of organisations are coming together to participate in a project. If each stakeholder’s assurance requirements are actioned independently, it is likely to engage the project in duplicate effort with no additional benefit. The first dimension for integrated assurance is bringing together the disparate requirements of individual stakeholders and establishing a single set of assurance activities that satisfies the needs of all stakeholders as efficiently as possible.
2. Governance hierarchy. A second dimension of integrated assurance derives from applying assurance at the appropriate level in the hierarchy of project, programme or portfolio. Typically, an organisation will run a portfolio of programmes and individual projects. Stakeholders in the organisation itself may be different from stakeholders in specific programmes and individual projects, and each group of stakeholders will have its own assurance requirements. Without integration an individual project may find itself subjected to assurance processes from a project level, a programme level and a portfolio level – with little co-ordination between them.
3. Lifecycle stages. A third dimension of integrated assurance is to recognise that assurance activities will be carried out on a number of occasions throughout the lifecycle of the project and to ensure that the activities on any one occasion are wholly pertinent to that particular stage in the project lifecycle. This also allows linkage to programme lifecycle stages where appropriate.
4. Level of independence. The definition of assurance also implies the need for some measure of independence from the team directly managing the project, since lack of such independence would potentially reduce the confidence that stakeholders might have in the assurance reports. In practice, a good project team will carry out certain activities for the purposes of pr...

Table of contents

• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Executive summary
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Principles
• Chapter 3 Approach to integrated assurance of projects
• Chapter 4 Roles and responsibilities in the context of integrated assurance
• Chapter 5 Further reading
• Appendix 1 – Tools and templates
• Appendix 2 – Glossary
• Backcover